After E-mails from Austenland
by everyl1ttleth1ng
Summary: My first Austenland fanfic, E-mails from Austenland, followed Henry through his time under his aunt's roof and ever-so-slightly beyond. These little stories, approximately 100 words in length (which apparently means they're known as "drabbles") seek to provide pithy little updates on all the Austenland beloveds…
1. Chapter 1

Agatha Nobley found it deeply irritating that she was beginning to be known as "Henry's aunt." She had vastly preferred it that week when he sat in her drawing room in his Regency-inspired breeches and was introduced as _her_ nephew. On top of that, she was wracked with indecision. Would she hold onto the reigns and watch as the contents of her dwindling bank account syphoned themselves ever more rapidly into the financial black hole that was Austenland? Or would she make the sacrifice akin to cutting off her own arm and agree to sell the place to that vulgar Charming woman?


	2. Chapter 2

Miss Elizabeth Charming, as she was now legally known, thanks to one of her lawyers and a deed poll certificate, had renounced embroidery, reading, whist, millinery and all other forms of sedentary activity. Instead, she busied herself exclusively with horse riding, pheasant shooting and period dancing in preparation for claiming ownership of the business she felt certain she would eventually get her hands on. Her plans to transform Austenland to an attraction more akin to Disneyland than Mansfield Park drove her relentlessly. She could not rest, nor shop, nor even have a manicure, until the place was hers.


	3. Chapter 3

Colonel Andrews, a military man of no small consequence, was, against all principle, shirking his duty. Truth be told, he had locked himself in the linen cupboard and was slowly asphyxiating in the heady scent of lavender drawer sachets. The object of his aversion could be heard cooing for him in the corridors and it was all he could do not to burst into tears of frustration. Mrs Wattlesbrook had assured him multiple times that the no touching rule had been expressed with absolute clarity and yet, in his experience, it was contravened at every point. So _what_ if he proved irresistible to women? A man needed protection and he just wasn't getting enough of it.


	4. Chapter 4

Miss Amelia Hartwright put a call through to Erik, her preferred masseuse. She preferred Erik because he had muscles on his muscles and his studio was as far as she could reasonably travel from the mansion she shared with her decrepit husband without having to pack an overnight bag. She wondered how corruptible Erik might turn out to be. As yet he had rebuffed even her least subtle advances. He was no Captain George East, that's for sure. For shame.


	5. Chapter 5

Captain George East loved his work. As a man missing every scruple, without even a nuance of human understanding, he had fallen into a sociopath's heaven in Austenland where wealthy desperadoes made themselves available to him at every turn. He flexed his baby-oiled muscles in the sunlight and batted his eyelids at the new arrivals. One of these days his ship would come in and some top LA music producer would arrive at Austenland. He imagined himself as the world famous rap artist he dreamed he'd one day become. If only knowing every word to The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff's _Boom, Shake, Shake, Shake the Room_ could launch him on his chosen career. He'd be slaying them in the aisles.


	6. Chapter 6

Mr Wattlesbrook, as his pseudonym identified him, was not enjoying life behind bars. One too many gropes in the dark had finally caught up with him and now, sideburnless and pipeless, he stood in line for beans, resplendent in his orange onesie like all the other inmates. At night, alone in his bunk, he yearned for a sheep's eyeball or two, a round of whist, a nip of scotch and a nubile gaggle of heiresses in empire-line frocks. Unfortunately, his previous employer had made one thing perfectly clear, he would never set foot on her manicured lawns ever, ever again. Farewell, to pheasant, fire-arms and featricals.


	7. Chapter 7

Martin, or Creepy Martin, as he was commonly known, was still enjoying his dubious successes with the Austenland patrons. Kittens, foals and an unexpectedly frisky litter of imported salt-water crocodiles had the ladies fainting at his feet. Still miffed that he was yet to be promoted to the big house, he actively jostled for promotion at every opportunity, prompting Mrs Wattlesbrook to run in the opposite direction whenever she saw him coming. The retirement of the resident taxidermist brought some tasks his way that weren't exactly to his taste but he was more intimately acquainted than ever with the fake birds he had charge of placing at the start of each day.


	8. Chapter 8

Davey and Ginger, at home above The Cock and Bull, in the mean streets of New York City, cooed and giggled over their latest arrival, Sebastian Henry McCorkindale. He kicked his little legs like a tiny World Cup champion and made his parents glow with pride. Regular Skype dates with his godparents, Henry and Jane Nobley, in which they took it in turns to read him Austen bedtime stories, began imperceptibly to shape and guide the extremely young man in the footsteps of everyone's favourite Fitzwilliam Darcy while his dad did his best to lead him in the way of Dr Who. It was yet to be seen, at three months, whose influence would dominate.


	9. Chapter 9

Thoroughly modern Mollie's son had come into the world not long after the wedding and had been given the name Maverick. Jane and Henry had rolled their eyes and immediately gifted little Maverick a colourful tea set made from recycled milk bottles and a complete set of abridged Austen novels. Mollie rolled _her _eyes and tucked the books under his racing car themed cot. Jane and Henry struck again with a little knight costume and a silver spoon. Mollie, who had just purchased and Iron Man suit and a nerf gun and lived on the other side of the pond, shoved them into a drawer. The battle for Maverick's soul had begun.


	10. Chapter 10

Carrie, Nate, Arlo and Lulu had taken to placing bets on the number of times they would catch Henry and Jane stealing a snog in each of the family's encounters with them. An enterprising Arlo had even instituted a "snog jar" into which Henry was to place a generous donation towards his nephew's fencing lessons every time they were caught. He hit the jackpot in hush money when he stumbled across his uncle and aunt ripping one another's clothes off late one summer afternoon behind the chook shed. Lulu, who was going through a marriage-is-for-losers phase would only roll her eyes and pretend to vomit, much less endearing than her brother's hard capitalism.


	11. Chapter 11

As for Jane and Henry themselves, they lived in a bubble of tea and happiness. Theirs was a love forged in the unlikely fires of cosplay and e-mails, theatricals and firearms, bathtubs and ballrooms, sketchbooks and sheep's eyeballs. Repeatedly busted for physical displays of affection that grossed out their relations, the two of them found themselves overstepping the mark again when they brought round the pee-stained positive pregnancy test as a means of announcing their happy news. Henry immediately embarked on a reading of the canon to Jane's as yet entirely flat belly, claiming that if they started straight away, the child could benefit from two, if not three read-throughs before it even hit the birth canal.


	12. Chapter 12

Jane was instructed to sit down and put her feet up if she even so much as looked meaningfully at the washing up and so she relaxed into a sloth that she would struggle to clamber her way out of for the remainder of their married life. But Henry, daily so ecstatic to have found himself such a glorious companion, served and served her without even a thought for his own self-preservation. Jane was delivered a tray in bed every morning, on which she found, without fail, her favourite London Pottery Co red-and-white polka dot teapot, and matching cup and saucer, as well as a revolving door of boiled eggs with soldiers, pancakes with banana and maple syrup, eggs benedict, french toast, backyard-lady-omlettes and homemade hashbrowns. While he washed up after breakfast, Henry planned what he could serve her for lunch, while Jane lay back groaning and planned how she try to escape for some exercise to offset the nothing-says-I-love-you-like mountains of carbs.


	13. Chapter 13

Their house was wallpapered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and if Henry and Jane weren't eating, drinking tea or undressing one another, the pair of them could inevitably be found sprawled across their parralel couches by the fire, wiling away the hours with a book. The baby, whom the scan suggested was a girl, was temporarily christened Sprog and treated to long in-utero monologues by her father, extolling the virtues of this or that breed of chook or Austen novel or brand of tea leaves. Henry's wardrobe gained more and more patched elbows, checked shirts and sweater vests which Jane delighted in buttoning him out of, sometimes before he'd even left the house for work. Jane's illustration work continued at her office until she could no longer fit behind her desk, at which point she just stayed home and used her protruding belly as a work station.


	14. Chapter 14

Arlo got his mother to teach him how to knit so he could make a little hat for the anticipated arrival. Lulu pretended she thought it was lame but was secretly working away at a competition crocheted baby beanie of her own. Jane spent hours quizzing Carrie in person and Mollie and Ginger by telephone, on birth and babies and bassinets but Carrie, eight years out from the carnage of a newborn, had nothing to offer but hazily blissful memories with all of the horrific bits kindly edited out. Jane found these unreliable memoirs extremely reassuring. Mollie and Ginger's much fresher and more disturbing observations were put down to the stress of life in New York City.


	15. Chapter 15

Henry quizzed Nate and Davey and every other father he happened upon in the supermarket of a Saturday morning as to what he needed to know, own and conquer in order to be a fitting father for this glorious creature growing inside his radiant bride. Men, without quite the same hormonal obliteration of memory faced by their partners, put less of a rose-coloured gloss on everything, so where Jane was lulled into a false sense of security, Henry was whipped into a terrorised frenzy.


	16. Chapter 16

But when Henry finally got to hold the little pink bundle in his arms, he was relieved to find that he had no idea what all the fuss had been about. Jane had clearly been the most amazing woman ever to give birth and here they were, suddenly a family of three, with merely a mad dash to the hospital and a few minutes of roaring behind them now that their tiny, perfect, Elena Mollie Nobley had made her way into the world. He blinked away the tears of joy and they laughed uproariously at their three enormous but unopened, expertly and repeatedly packed and itemised birthing bags. It seemed Elena didn't even have time for them to get the BeeGees playing on the ipod before she wanted out. And now that she was out, their already large hearts were mystically and wonderfully expanded and enlarged to welcome this new little one into their family that suddenly seemed that it had never been comprised of anything less than three.


	17. Chapter 17

In the blissful haze that followed the day of Elena's birth, Henry tiptoed up the stairs, carefully balancing Jane's heavily laden breakfast tray. He was conscious he might have overdone it. Gently placing the tray on the bedside table, he turned to ask Jane if she wanted pepper on her poached eggs. Jane was asleep, curled around the tiny form of their newborn who, in a sign of what was clearly prodigious talent, smiled a little smile in her sleep. Henry was torn between running to fetch the camera or just standing and watching and savouring the moment. He chose to savour and stood and wept with happiness as the eggs congealed and the toast went soggy and the tea turned cold. Was there ever a colder hot breakfast or a happier man? Henry thought not.

.

* * *

.

I think I'll leave them here for now, but I'm not ruling out returning. Let me know if you think you've got room for more Austenland fan-fic in your life!


	18. Chapter 18

As the days and the weeks and the months went by, the sleep-deprivation waxed and waned, the astounding piles of baby-washing grew and shrunk, and Henry, Jane and Elena settled into family life. Henry would arrive home from work to find Jane and Elena gently snoozing together in the squashy armchair in front of the fire and just sit and adore them for a few minutes before boiling the kettle for his compulsory home-coming pot of Russian Caravan. Jane would open her eyes of a morning to find Elena's tiny form ensconsed in the arms of her snoring father and lay there enjoying this scene of paternal bliss before tiptoing down the stairs to the boil the kettle for their compulsory early-morning pot of English Breakfast. On the weekends, the two of them would lie on the rug on either side of little Elena as she lay on her back, legs in the air, trying with all her might to pull off her socks, before one or the other of them would get up to boil the kettle for their compulsory Saturday afternoon pot of Earl Grey. Their parenting was sustained by and well-steeped in the pungent leaf - that was the way this English chap and his Anglophile wife rolled.

* * *

.

.

_Firing off a few hundred words about this little trio every now and then is just too tempting. I suspect this one will never be fully "complete"!_


	19. Chapter 19

Sometimes, while Henry sat in the armchair by the fire, reading Elena a passage or two about her namesake from _Northanger Abbey_, Jane would sit opposite with her sketchbook trying to capture the scene in charcoal. She had married a good-looking man, there were no two ways about it. And, if anything, Henry grew ever more attractive as he rocked their daughter to sleep in his arms, tunelessly humming an unidentifiable song, his countenance one of pure adoration. He cheerfully ferried baskets of washing to and from the laundry, or stirred a soup on the stove, or stoked the fire, or brewed a pot of tea for his wife, whistling to himself in his utter contentment and, in doing so, he surpassed even the beauty of Adonis, Narcissus or any other famous, gorgeous, self-absorbed god of antiquity. Jane loved the moments when she could work away at translating that exact half-smile or the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes or the perfection of Henry's hand cradling Elena's tiny head, to paper. She would flick through her sketchbook and laugh. What was once a good likeness was now an intimate portrait, the details and idiosyncrasies captured with the precision that comes with familiarity. To think Henry had once commented on the number of drawings she'd made of him. That paltry four or five had now been exceeded by a number somewhere in the thousands and the besotted artist showed no signs of slowing down.


	20. Chapter 20

Gradually, transatlantic dynastic schemes began to be hatched and plans began to be laid. Molly thought that despite her parents' weird influence, little Elena would probably turn out alright. What self-respecting person could enter her teenage years obsessed with… and then she remembered Jane. Jane and Henry were somewhat less open-minded when it came to Maverick and passed him over entirely, in favour of the as yet small though inherently dashing Sebastian. Sebastian and Elena kicked and gurgled happily at each other on the occasions of their appointed Skype dates and all their observing ancestors declared it to be a sign of true love. Henry and Jane together with Davey and Ginger plotted the alliance without giving the slightest thought to the despicable Lady Catherine de Bourgh whose example, along with that of the late Mrs Darcy, they unwittingly followed. However, unlike the Lady de Bourgh, neither party harboured any sense of their children actually having to carry through with their parents' marriage plot.


	21. Chapter 21

p class="MsoNormal"On his third birthday, Maverick was presented with a child-size car. Powered by a horrific amount of batteries, the thing roared along the pavement terrorising pedestrians. Before he sped off into the knee-caps of the neighbourhood senior citizens, Molly kissed him on the forehead and slid a miniature pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses onto his nose./p  
p class="MsoNormal"Not many months later, only a few suburbs away, the newly three-year-old Sebastian was given a zoo membership and a junior science kit. Davey and Ginger duly slathered their pale English skin with sunscreen, donned their sunhats and marched their excited boy off to meet the animals./p  
p class="MsoNormal"Almost a year after that, little Elena awoke on her third birthday to find her bedroom floor covered in brightly coloured balloons. She donned her customary knight costume, complete with sword and shield, and then commenced gallantly stomping on the balloons, shrieking with delight as each and every foe was vanquished with a satisfying bang. There would be no sleeping in for Mummy and Daddy on her third birthday! She rushed into their bedroom and landed deftly between them after a running jump from the doorway./p  
p class="MsoNormal"While Henry stumbled blearily towards the kitchen to brew a pot of tea, Jane and Elena cuddled up together for her three obligatory morning stories. At that moment, everything had to feature a dragon. By mutual agreement, Henry and Jane had decided Austen could wait – it was the 21supst/sup Century after all. Their daughter couldn't grow up thinking that accomplishment was limited to piano-playing and embroidery. Instead, Elena was learning tumbling, bike-riding, tree-climbing and insect-collecting with a little bit of extremely messy cup-cake making thrown in for good measure./p  
p class="MsoNormal"For her birthday, by particular request, she received one set of dragon wings, two wooden jousting sticks, three new carriages for her Brio railway and a pink and purple sparkly fairy wand and skirt thrown in for good measure. Consistency was not in her (nor any other three-year-old's) nature./p  
p class="MsoNormal"./p  
hr /  
p class="MsoNormal" /p  
p class="MsoNormal"em./em/p  
p class="MsoNormal"emHa! That somewhat exceeded 100 words!/em/p 


End file.
